Train Ride

Monday, April, 23rd

Today we had a driver, Sergey, pick us up from the hotel at 5:50am and take us to the train station to catch a 7:15 train to Kotlas. In order to prepare for the long 26 hour train ride the hotel provided two lunch boxes,which was nice, and we had the snacks that we bought yesterday. Hopefully, this will keep us satisfied.

St Petersburg train station

The train ride is not as bad as I thought it was going to be. We are in a sleeper car that has four bunk beds and a small table. We have the car to ourselves to relax in and do whatever which consists of eating, reading, and a lot of short naps because there isn't much more we can do without having Internet. We pretty much just keep to ourselves because no one speaks English.

our train car

Each train car has an attendant and in her car she has some snacks and coffee or tea packets to buy. There is a Samovar, a device used to heat and boil water (see photo below), in each car to use to make our oatmeal or ramen noodles, tea or coffee. At one point, I mustered up the courage to check out the other cars and i found a food car. But, it was closed so i don' t know what it has. Although, in my wanderings it was interesting to see some of the other cars. Many of the cars did not have the private sleeping quarters. There were bunk beds out in the open and you had to walk right by people sleeping or lying in their bed.

a Samovar

The countryside in Russia was not much to be desired.  The houses we passed by were very dilapidated and falling down.  There were mostly dirt roads and with the melting snow and rain a lot of MUD!  There was also a lot of trees-Birch trees-and logging seemed to be a way of life.

It was a 26 hour ride to Kotlas and we almost missed our stop. We were told to get off at the 9:25am stop. But at 9:00 Dimitry, our representative in Russia, came to our train car to get us and said we had five minutes to get off and that this was our stop. Oops! Well, when every sign at the train depots are in Russian it was hard to tell what stop we were at. Now I know how it feels to be illiterate. Because that is how I am feeling in Russia---illiterate.


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